Victoria Cosford
Eleanor, presiding over the table of apples and pears, weighing the contents of the metal bowls as the steady stream of customers, mostly regulars, file up to her, has just given me two magnificent tips.
‘When you hold an apple up to your ear and tap it with your finger,’ she begins, ‘the higher the pitch, the crunchier the apple will be.’ She explains how, at this time of year, mid-season for apples, they change a lot from week to week and this little exercise ‘really helps determine the crunch level.’
Her second tip is about pears, the pears you tend to dismiss in favour of those big sexy Pink Ladies, sweet sweet Fujis, useful Granny Smiths – pears which, according to Eleanor, ‘are amazing!’ She tells me they sell out every week. ‘After three days they’re heaven’, she says. ‘Generally, someone will buy just one then come back the next week and buy five.’ Pears, it transpires, ripen from the inside out, and ‘when the stalk pulls out,’ she tells me, ‘they’re ripe, they’re ready.’
It’s either Eleanor you’ll find at the McMahon’s stall – where she’s been selling apples for more than eight years – or her sister Vanessa, two gorgeous girls with a font of knowledge about the produce they so enthusiastically sell. ‘What I love about selling apples,’ Eleanor says, ‘is that they sell themselves – I never have to pitch them. Because they’re local and they’re organic, and everyone has their favourites.’ She agrees with her sister that Pink Ladies are the most popular – ‘it’s as much because people know them,’ she says, ‘as that they’re so good!’ But all the apples have their charms, their individual characteristics – the Sundowners ‘a lot crunchier and a lot more tart than Pink Ladies’; the Royal Galas and Red Delicious intensely sweet.
McMahon’s Apples are at New Brighton Farmers Markets every Tuesday from 8am to 11am and Mullumbimby Farmers Market every Friday from 7am to 11am.
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